Scars Of Domestic Violence

[MAITRI]

Uma Dalal, an engineer, was married in New Delhi to a well-settled
engineer working in a hi-tech company in the Silicon Valley, US, with
great joy and happiness on both sides.
However, soon after she arrived in the US on a H4 Visa, things started
to go sour. Her husband refused to give her access to money. She could
not drive as he would not pay for driving lessons and she had no
family or friends to go to.
Each time he accused her of not paying attention to his needs, her
parents not being respectful to his parents in India, not giving
enough gifts or valuable gifts to his family, Uma not cooking the food
properly and once the complaint was that she had not put enough haldi
(turmeric) in the dal.
Uma spoke to her parents on the phone, who told her to be patient and
pleaded with her to make the marriage work and adjust. Uma endured, by
the image of her own disgrace and her parents’ shame if she left her
husband.
The abuse continued to escalate to the point where her husband began
unplugging and taking the phone to work with him to prevent Uma from
calling anyone.
Then the physical abuse started...a push here, a nudge there, a pinch
here and a slap there. He sometimes joked about it and said that she
had become oversensitive and could not take any teasing.
Once pregnant, things seemed to improve for a while, but then
gradually became worse. Her husband now taunted her with the unborn
baby.
He claimed it was not his; he wanted a DNA test, he did not believe
her, he was sure it was someone else’s. One day he pushed her hard and
she lost her balance and fell over. She felt the baby stop moving
inside her, and was terrified that she had lost the baby.
This seemed to scare her husband a bit and there was no more violence,
until after the baby was born. However, with her mother-in-law in the
US for the baby’s birth, the situation escalated to the breaking point
almost immediately. It seemed her husband had an excuse to hit her
everyday and appealing to her mother-in-law worsened the violence. Her
husband lay new demands on her like when she was supposed to get up,
feed the baby, not feed the baby, cook and clean.
When the baby was eight-weeks old, there was a huge episode of
physical violence. Uma’s husband was enraged that she was feeding the
baby when he had asked her not to. He grabbed the baby and threw him
against the wall. Luckily, the baby was unharmed but this time, Uma
ran out of the apartment and asked the neighbours to call the police.
The police arrested her husband and took Uma and the baby away and
called Maitri, a Bay Area based non-profit organisation helping South
Asian victims of domestic violence on her behalf.
Maitri volunteers worked with Uma for almost two years providing her
transitional housing, peer counselling, legal assistance, and job
search assistance. Uma stayed in the transitional home for almost one
year and used that time to get additional educational qualifications,
a driving license and a job that got her a work visa.
She saved for an apartment, and completed the legal process for a
divorce and the custody of her son. Her mother came over from India to
help her, while she worked. The lawyer helped her get custody of her
baby and child support from her ex-husband. Today, Uma is the
confident and bright woman she was before the three years of hell she
endured with her ex-husband.
“We helped over 980 women last year. Our clients belong to all
professions — engineers, doctors, nurses, hi-tech marketing and sales
executives, homemakers and others. Their educational level may vary
from a PhD to a high school; they may be multi-lingual or mono-
lingual, come from every state in India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, may
have none or one to two children and can be of any religion or faith,”
says Sonya Pelia, President of the Board at Maitri.
The number of victims has steadily risen over the past years. “Our
clients face transnational abandonment and joint/extended family abuse
besides spousal abuse. Large numbers of victims are unaware of their
legal rights, and may be economically dependent on the batterer,” says
Sarah Khan, a program director at Maitri.
Anu Natarajan, Council member in Fremont, says, “It would be very easy
for us to ignore the problem of domestic violence in our community but
the problem will not disappear.”


http://www.asianage.com/life-and-style/scars-domestic-violence-834